In one corner, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk; in the other, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. For years Musk has warned that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation”, while Zuckerberg says he is “optimistic” about the possibilities AI offers. So who is right about the perils of AI?

It’s an issue worth pondering. AI is already an integral part of our everyday lives. It’s giving us information and helping us with our daily tasks on our phones and computers, in the form of Apple’s Siri and Android’s Cortana; it’s translating languages on Google Translate; and it’s now officially better at the complex game Go than everyone else on the planet. And it’s only going to become more ubiquitous. AI is, for example, an essential component of autonomous cars, which are set to take over our roads in the near future.

In response to one of Tay’s tweets, Musk replied, “Will be interesting to see what the mean time to Hitler is for these bots. Only took Microsoft’s Tay a day.”

So the question is: could AI eventually take over the world?

Elon Musk on AI

According to Musk, people just don’t appreciate how quickly AI technology is currently developing.

At the International Space Station (ISS) R&D conference in Washington DC on 19 July, Musk said this during a Q&A session: “I think it is difficult to appreciate just how far artificial intelligence has advanced and how fast it is advancing because we have a double exponential at work: we have exponential increase in hardware capability, and we have an exponential increase in software talent that is going into AI. So when you have a double exponential, it’s very difficult to predict. Real predictions are almost always going to be too conservative.”

His fear is not robots rising up and taking over the world; what is more likely, he thinks, is in fact much more sinister.

In an interview with CNN, Musk said: “It would be fairly obvious if you saw a robot walking around talking and behaving like a person … What’s not obvious is a huge server bank in a dark vault somewhere with intelligence that’s potential vastly greater than what a human mind can do. I mean, it’s eyes and ears would be everywhere, [in] every camera, every microphone, every device that’s network accessible. That’s really what AI means.”

He went on to say: “If we’re not careful about the advent of AI, it’s possible that there could be what’s called a ‘bad utility function’ … Humanity’s position on this planet is dependent on its intelligence, so if our intelligence is exceeded, it’s unlikely we will remain in charge of the planet.”

Mark Zuckerberg on AI

Zuckerberg’s take on the matter is decidedly sunnier.

In a Facebook Live broadcast on 20 July, he said: “If you’re arguing against AI, then you’re arguing against safer cars that aren’t going to have accidents. And you’re arguing against being able to better diagnose people when they’re sick. I just don’t see how, in good conscience, some people can do that. I’m just much more optimistic on this, in general, than probably a lot of folks are.”

It’s no secret that Facebook are investing heavily in AI, and that Zuckerberg has ambitions for Facebook that are reliant on the technology. In December 2016 last year, Zuckerberg previewed an AI assistant he had built for his home. In the video, the assistant, Jarvis, voiced by none other than Morgan Freeman, shot t-shirts out of a cannon, spoke Mandarin with Zuckerberg’s daughter, and use facial recognition software to see that Zuckerberg’s parents were at the door.

One of the researchers, Dhruv Batra, spoke out about the reporting, saying, “While the idea of AI agents inventing their own language may sound alarming/unexpected to people outside the field, it is a well-established sub-field of AI … Simply put, agents in environments attempting to solve a task will often find unintuitive ways to maximise reward. Analysing the reward function and changing the parameters of an experiment is NOT the same as ‘unplugging’ or ‘shutting down AI’. If that were the case, every AI researcher has been ‘shutting down AI’ every time they kill a job on a machine.”

In that same Facebook Live broadcast, Zuckerberg said, “I think that people who are naysayers and kind of try to drum up these doomsday scenarios – I just, I don't understand it. I think it's really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible.”

To which Musk retorted: “I've talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.”

This was nearly the same level of trust in family members (94 per cent) or friends (92 per cent).Yet only 58 per cent of respondents said they would highly trust a colleague and 42 per cent, a neighbour.It turns out that we are far more likely to trust a stranger than their own colleagues or neighbours.

Why?????

What has created this trust on sharing platforms and the gig economy - and what can business learn from it?

It seems that there are two main reasons -

the strangers build a digital profile to let people know who they are, and this can be linked to other digital profiles.

Second, a lot of it is driven by trust in the platform itself. (Creating a rating system and form if insurance)

Which brings us to what the next evolution of Airbnb -

"sharing your passion with the world".

Another step replacing the old economy with the gig economy - and creating the "future of work" - making workers "entrepreneurs" - which may be giving us an idea of what the future of work will look like. ( see Thomas Friedman from The New York about Airbnb's next step)

Airbnb started by enabling people to rent their home or a room in their home to strangers. Now the site is branching out to let members host "experiences".

For $75 you can make brown soda bread and Irish stew at Eimhear's house in Dublin, or for $150 go kayaking on Sydney Harbour with Matt from Glebe. Both "hosts" have five stars.

Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky told Friedman he believed the experiences business had grown tenfold this year and could become even bigger than home sharing. He's 35, and his goal is to create 100 million new entrepreneurs by the time he retires.

"The biggest asset in people's lives is not their home, but their time and potential — and we can unlock that," Chesky says.

Friday, August 4, 2017

According to Business Insider, both Microsoft and Google envision a not-so-distant future in which donning smart headgear to repair an elevator or assemble a tractor motor is the norm. Over the past several days, both tech giants have revealed they're each taking concrete and compelling steps to make that happen.

Microsoft just revealed that it's working on a new artificial intelligence chip to power its second-generation HoloLens headset. The coprocessor's chief job will be implementing deep neural networks — a machine learning technique with a structure that loosely resembles the human brain — into the HoloLens' core processing unit. A dedicated A.I. chip is necessary to enable it to be able to comprehend large amounts of complex data gathered by its depth and camera sensors without latency. Microsoft’s HoloLens headset is likely to arrive in 2019.

The announcement comes days after Google divulged new information about its plans for the next iteration of Google Glass. It is the first time they have spoken about the new version of Glass in development for the workplace, which it calls Google Glass Enterprise Edition. The refreshed model will offer faster, more reliable Wi-Fi connectivity, improved security, a faster processor, a sharper camera and longer battery compared to its predecessor.

Taken together, the announcements confirm that Google and Microsoft view technologies like smart headgear and augmented reality as strategically vital, particularly in the workplace. Google's first stab at consumer-side smart goggles came in 2012 with its initial version of Google Glass, ultimately a flop.

Both Google and Microsoft have apparently learned from Glass's mistakes, focusing on applications in commercial scenarios. Google has tested Glass Enterprise Edition in some 50 businesses over the past two years, including companies like DHL, Sutter Health and Volkswagen.

While the basic concepts behind HoloLens and Google Glass overlap, in execution they couldn't be less alike. Google Glass is meant to be physically insubstantial like a pair of literal glasses, only noticeable when someone needs it for a specific task. It displays a small virtual screen above the wearer's eye, which can be glanced at without disrupting other visual tasks. The new version is able to clip onto existing eyeglasses rendering the technology more accessible for those who need prescription glasses or protective eyewear in their jobs. It must remain in wireless range of a smartphone to work properly.

HoloLens, is much more immersive, since it can display larger graphics that fall within the wearer's field of view. And unlike Glass, it's also a functionally holistic device, unconstrained by reliance on smartphone or virtual-reality-style computer tethers to operate. All of HoloLens's necessary computing components are baked into the headset. Note that none of these workplace-angled changes mean consumer-oriented versions of these headsets won't follow at some point.

When you put Glass or HoloLens on an engineer or mechanic, being able to see critical information at a glance, like how much torque should be applied to a wrench, or whether a new piece of equipment will fit in a medical facility's operating room, both upends and streamlines workflow. The question then becomes whether HoloLens or Glass will eventually dominate the workplace.

China has a population of a billion people. One billion. That means even if you’re a one in a million, there are still a thousand others exactly like you

Don't forget to listen into my radio show on VoiceAmerica Business at 5pm PSTevery Tuesday. Listen to any of my previous shows on VoiceAmerica archives at any time you choose. I interview some of the top people in business every week

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Amazon is coming for a pre Christmas launch - first distribution centre of 24k Sqm , opening up the requirement of 100s of new jobs

Below is a Amazon release:-

Amazon today announced that it will create hundreds of new jobs with the opening of its first Australian fulfilment centre in Dandenong South. Amazon will begin recruiting immediately for a range of roles, including operations managers, pickers, packers, systems technicians and HR specialists.

Amazon recently announced its intention to bring a retail offering to Australia and the opening of this 24,000 square metre fulfilment centre is an integral early step in the move towards that goal.

“We are thrilled to be creating hundreds of new roles in Dandenong South,” said Robert Bruce, Amazon’s director of operations for Australia. “This is just the start. Over time, we will bring thousands of new jobs to Australia and millions of dollars of investment as well as opening up the opportunity for thousands of Australian businesses to sell at home and abroad through Amazon Marketplace.”

The new centre is located in the Pellicano’s M2 Industry Park in Dandenong South, providing easy access to the South Gippsland Highway, Monash [Freeway] and Eastlink. The building is also in close proximity to a wide range of amenities for employees. The lease of the centre was facilitated by CBRE’s Industrial & Logistics business.

“This new fulfilment centre will stock hundreds of thousands of products which will be available for delivery to customers across Australia when we launch our retail offering,” said Robert Bruce.

“We will be focusing on offering our Australian customers low prices on a great selection of products and can’t wait to get started.”

Urban planners and policy makers around the world have started to brainstorm ways that cities can create more space for pedestrians and lower CO2 emissions.

Oslo announced a ban on all cars from its city by 2019, six years before Norway's country-wide ban would go into effect. Now, the country wants to take the initiative a step further. Norway is proposing a bill banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2025, investing heavily in public transport and replacing 35 miles of roads with bike lanes.

Madrid is banning cars from its city center by 2020, with urban planners redesigning 24 of the city's busiest streets for walking rather than driving. The plan is to reduce daily car usage from 30% to around 20%. It will be expensive to park the most polluting cars.

In Chengdu, China, the new city layout makes it easier to walk than drive, with streets designed so that people can walk anywhere in 15 minutes. While Chengdu won't completely ban cars, only half the roads will allow vehicles.

Hamburg plans to make walking and biking its dominant mode of transport. Hamburg is reducing the number of cars by only allowing pedestrians and bikers to enter certain areas. The project calls for "green network," of connected spaces that people can access without cars. The network is planned to cover 40% of Hamburg and will include parks, playgrounds and sports fields.

Over half of Copenhagen's population bikes to work every day, thanks to the city's effort to introduce pedestrian-only zones starting in the 1960s. The Danish capital now boasts more than 200 miles of bike lanes and has one of the lowest percentages of car ownership in Europe.

The latest goal is to build a superhighway for bikes that will stretch to surrounding suburbs. The 28 planned routes will be completed by the end of 2018. The city has also pledged to become completely carbon-neutral by 2025.

When Paris banned cars with even-numbered plates for a day in 2014, pollution dropped by 30%. Now, the city wants to discourage cars from driving in the city center at all.

Since last year, all drivers with cars made before 1997 are not permitted to drive in the city center on weekdays. Paris plans to double its bike lanes and limit select streets to electric cars. The city also curbs emissions through car-free Sundays rule last year.

London will ban diesel cars by 2020. Currently, the city discourages the use of diesel engines in some areas of the city by charging a fee of $12.50 per day for diesel cars.

Brussels, features the largest car-free area in Europe. Most streets that surround Brussels' city square, stock exchange, and Rue Neuve (a major shopping street) have always been pedestrian-only. The roads make up the second largest car-free zone in Europe, behind Copenhagen. For one day in September, all cars are banned from the entire city center.

It is proposed to turn a popular four-lane boulevard into a pedestrian-only area. Brussels has announced that diesel cars will be banned starting in 2018.

Mexico City plans to ban about two million cars from the city center by prohibiting a portion of cars from the city center two days every work week and two Saturdays per month. The policy helps to mitigate the city's high smog levels.

While New York City isn't planning a car ban anytime soon, it is increasing the number of pedestrian areas, along with bike share, subway, and bus options.

Beginning this week, strips of popular areas like Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square Park are permanently pedestrian-only. On three Saturdays, hundreds of thousands of people will take advantage of Summer Streets, an annual event that prohibits cars and opens major roads for pedestrians.

Cities are coming to the realization that they need to swing the pendulum

Key findings from a survey of more than 1000 business owners and directors, by MYOB's Business Monitor

Four in five SMEs believe new technologies will impact their business within the next ten years

One in four SMEs (76%) have invested in technology over the last 12 months to boost their innovative capacity

Other insights included

Almost a third of respondents had acquired computer software and hardware, making it the dominant form of technological investment, followed by the acquisition of machinery and equipment.

78% believe technological advancements will impact their business in the next decade, while 40% expect this impact to be significant.

57% believe global giants such as Amazon, which is expected to commence operating in Australia next year, are forcing the local market to embrace innovation.

29% thought the biggest barrier to introducing and developing innovation was the cost associated with this undertaking. Other barriers included excessive government regulation (26%) and inadequate government support (25%).

Gen Y business owners were more likely to nominate big data and machine learning as having an impact on their business - citing efficiencies, better targeting and providing better service (replacing jobs???)

SMEs can derive huge value just by making small changes.that are not major costs

Upskilling you and your team through continuos education - this can be done with government and industry support (see www.bbg.business and www.paulgreenberg.com for 2 examples on what you can do)

Social Media Presence - Only 22% of businesses surveyed have a social media presence. Those using it saw an increase in enquiries and, in 54% of cases, greater interaction with customers. The survey iindicated that half of the businesses on social media said it made doing business easier.

Improved connectivity and collaboration with clients should be technology that SME's will give most impact to their business into the future,

Move to cloud software is a simple innovation -. “businesses are embracing online accounting solutions over old, desktop software which can often be onerous to use.

How will Amazon , Artificial Intelligence and technology effect your business ?

Friday, July 28, 2017

I want to congratulate the grant recipients today. I also want to thank Google.org for supporting the increasingly important conversation surrounding the Future of Work.

Changing Nature of Work

I don’t have to convince anyone in this room that we are experiencing one of the most dramatic transformations in the American workforce in decades.

Whether by economic necessity or choice, as many as one-third of Americans now find themselves in the contingent workforce. They are working as independent contractors, as temps, freelancers, or in the on-demand, or ‘gig,’ economy.

Some estimates have this number growing to half of the workforce over the next 10 years.

And economists Larry Katz and Alan Krueger estimate that almost all the net job growth over the last decade occurred in independent work.

Policy and Data

These changes create challenges – and opportunities.

But policymaking has lagged behind these seismic labor shifts.

Here in D.C., I’m still working to wake up some of my colleagues in public office to the realities of working in the 21s t century.

Part of this lag is due to lack of accurate data.

Here in the United States, the gold standard survey on how employers are training workers has not been conducted in over two decades.

And before this year, the last time the government had surveyed Americans on contingent work was 2005. For reference, the first iPhone was released in 2007. The app store was born in 2008.

As an organization that provides a keyhole into the wealth of data of the internet, Google knows better than anyone the power of data in informing decision-making.

Bayes Impact, one of today’s grantees, is already finding ways to leverage that data towards better job placements and closing the skills gap in France.

While it may be near-impossible to predict what the future of work will hold, being prepared for that future demands an understanding of where we are today. And on the data front, we obviously need to do better.

Worker Training

With the nature of work changing at internet speed, if you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.

My dad worked for the same firm for 30+ years. People in my generation are expected to have had six jobs over their careers.

The jobs available today - and the jobs expected tomorrow - are higher-skill jobs that will require targeted and continuous learning to allow workers to adapt to changing technology.

That’s why I believe we must come up with new and smarter approaches to workforce training.

The trend toward shorter job tenure has been a disincentive for employers to invest in upskilling their workers.

We need to make it easier and more affordable for people to access skills training by incentivizing employers to constantly up-skill their workforce.

For instance, a Worker Training Tax Credit -- modeled on the popular R&D tax credit -- could be used by small and large businesses to invest in training for their lower- and middle-income workers.

I want to keep working with you all to find solutions to help workers thrive in this changing economy.

Portable Benefits Experimentation

While the changing nature of work has opened up more opportunities and made work more independent, it’s also less stable and less secure.

People who are not attached to full-time employment usually have no access to the suite of benefits and protections we have traditionally tied to employment status since the 1930s.

To move the ball forward on a 21st century social safety net, we have introduced legislation establishing grant a program specifically to fund experimentation around portable benefits models.

If we attempt a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach from Washington, we’re going to screw this up.

Innovators need to get busy innovating before regulators rush in to regulate.

For instance, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, here today, is already doing great work in this field, helping domestic workers access benefits like sick leave.

Just as we’re not sure what skills the jobs of the future will require, we are not sure what the hours or work schedules of the future will look like. Or the benefits those workers will most need.

That’s why our bill emphasizes innovation and experimentation across all kinds of benefits, and all kinds of methods of providing them.

And this isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue.

There are folks from both parties who recognize the changing nature of work is going to change the ways we support the workforce.

I’m pleased that just this week, actually, Senator Todd Young – Republican from Indiana – decided to co-sponsor our bill.

Innovation and Experimentation

For almost two years now, I’ve been crisscrossing the country, attempting to learn everything I can about these issues of the future of work. I don’t know where this conversation ends, but here’s where it might start.

First, we have a greater responsibility to strengthen the social contract than ever. Too many low- and middle-income Americans are getting the short end of the stick. The objectives of the social contract remain the same, but the pathways to achieving it need to be modernized to meet the demands of this new era.

Second , we have to make innovation our ally, not our enemy. Solutions to these challenges should develop from some of the same technological advances and entrepreneurial creativity that are driving new business models.

Third , we should be innovating now to design models that can support the many new ways people work, with more nimble ways of upskilling the workforce, and portable benefits attached to the individual regardless of the number of jobs they might have over the course of a day or a career.

Fourth, as a longtime entrepreneur myself, I strongly urge forward-leaning business leaders and policymakers to do exactly what you’re doing today -- looking for opportunities and creative partnerships to further explore what works, and what doesn’t.

If those of us in public office do not find new ways to think about and work on these issues, then shame on us: we will have learned nothing from the message sent by the voters last November.

I know that this constant nonsense in the news makes you want to throw your shoe at the TV. I feel that way too, and I’m in the TV.

But if we can get this right and change the conversation on our economy to orient less left versus right and more future versus past, I believe we will emerge stronger because of it.

So thank you for having me here today and thank you for the meaningful work you are doing.

Why is Telemarketing company "ListenTrust" outperforming its competitors and is a company that people aspire to be part of?

Founders Craig Handley and Tony Riccardo share their secret....

They focus on up-skilling their team , by treating their business as a training ground or "vocational university" - so their employees can aspire to bigger and better things.

“When we hire you, we tell you exactly what we’re doing: training you to quit,” enthuses Handley.

This isn’t some BS corporate policy that employees secretly roll their eyes about. Handley, Ricciardi, and upper management work directly with employees to chart where they want to go in their lives and exactly how to get there.

The program targets six pillars of personal development from career goals to intellectual growth.

The result is a clear blueprint for each employee on how to achieve their dreams and how ListenTrust fits into that picture. Employees then receive one-on-one mentorship, online training, and live events to get them there.

An example of a client result "ListenTrust took a campaign from another center doing $8 in revenue per call and within a month, agents produced $24 per call on the same campaign."

But initially there was pushback against some of the firm’s efforts to build an incredible culture—and Employees didn’t want to talk about personal issues with managers and executives, especially sensitive topics that might have related to their personal goals, like eliminating personal debt.

However, over time, when employees understood the ethos of the business, they started to embrace this culture of learning.

An interesting insight - giving creates more happiness than receiving

“Forrester Research came in to do a study to see how we could improve happiness. An interesting insight was in respect of pay increases ......

It turned out that a raise of 50 cents an hour increased performance, but happiness stayed the same. Interestingly, giving that money to charity instead ending up improving both performance and happiness. Happier employees were found to have higher close rates. The lesson? “It was profitable to do good,” says Handley.

Machine learning with a human advantage.

Today, ListenTrust is busy solidifying its diligently forged culture across every part of the company.

With advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Handley and Ricciardi see the future of the call center business as one where humans and machines work hand in hand to provide better service. “We believe AI, predictive models, and algorithms are really going to change the type of calls we’re going to handle and how those calls are processed,” says Ricciardi.

This technological shift could help the company better identify who wants to buy and who doesn’t and tailor offers appropriately for the best possible outcome. That means better service and prices for customers.

Ivan's Insight

Here's the interesting thing..... the companies "pulse" has nothing to do with telemarketing - it has to do with educating enthusing and inspiring their team . They just happen to provide their customers with an outstanding telemarketing service.

For most people in the conference room, the relevance of emotional intelligence manifests in two major areas.

Firstly, at work: To operate more efficiently in ones current workplace, expanding influence in team or networkingenvironments and moving toward organizational excellence to generate greater revenue for the company.

Secondly, at home: to find peace in the family home.

For a millennial on the brink of acareer,with an unprecedented potential to impact the world, emotional intelligence is the space that exists before the parachute opens and after leaping out of a moving plane. It’s a scary, painful and real sensitivity to ones surroundings. It’s an intense feeling of self-awareness. A dangerous realization of ones impact. In my definition, if true emotional intelligencewas an extreme sport, most people in the room would perish.

Are the collaborations occurring between large corporations and the government, causing destruction of the planet and people, a result of emotionally intelligent leaders?

On behalf of a desperate generation facing the impact ofclimate change, coal mines and a growing refugee crisis (to say the least), the meaning of emotional intelligence hasleveled up and is now of utmost importance or we face impending doom.

Empathizing with others, expressing emotions, feeling positive, confident and proud of ones achievements, having good relationships, being resilient, positive and a good judge of character is recognized asbaseline self enquiry.

These revelationsbelong in a postcolonial paradigm when we learnt to treat humans with basic sense of humanity.

We've heard about medical professionals using VR to augment their suites for years, but Google is testing its fit in the broader workplace, starting with employment's least fun experience: Training. The company's Daydream Labs hosted an experiment to see if hypothetical new hires learned better by watching training videos or donning a VR headset and walking through simulations -- and it turns out, immersive education does a better job. For this single trial, anyway.

The experiment pit two groups against each other in the time-honored competition of brewing better coffee. One watched barista training videos on YouTube, while the other went through a course in VR with a simulated espresso machine (think Job Simulator without the jokes). Ultimately, the VR crew took less time and made fewer mistakes -- though Google was quick to point out that neither group made impressive java.

A single trial isn't enough proof to definitively give VR the work training crown, but it's certainly promising for anyone making educational tools in virtual reality. It also pointed out the medium's drawbacks: The VR group might have learned how to twist the right dials on the 3D-modeled espresso machine, but the simulated training didn't teach the pressure-sensitive art of tamping down grounds into the espresso scoop -- something that haptic vibration in controllers doesn't sell. Plus, hot steam nozzles in VR didn't carry the same danger as those in real life, and chaperones had to yank the workers' hands away.

Gloves with better tracking and haptics could make up the difference, but there might just be jobs that can't be simulated well in VR -- at least with our current technology, Google's Daydream team wrote in a blog post. There were other hurdles with training in virtual reality: Namely, people don't follow instructions, rush ahead and ignore hints. They also didn't perform steps in order, so the team had to redesign the training like a video game wherein folks could fulfill tasks in any sequence (steaming the milk before grinding the coffee instead of after, for example).

While this VR session won't be ported into a Starbucks training course tomorrow, it was still a successful experiment, the Daydream team asserted in the post -- and it has promising lessons for learning experiences beyond occupational skill-building.